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Christian activist Anthony Martínez detained in Guanajay after answering a police summons
Content creator and Christian activist Anthony Martínez Román remains held at the Technical Investigations Department in Guanajay, Artemisa, since he reported on Friday, November 6 to a police summons, according to his wife, religious groups and independent outlets.
Martínez Román reported on the morning of Friday, November 6 to the police station known as the Técnico de Guanajay, in Artemisa, and shortly afterwards his wife, Laura Rodríguez Au, received a call telling her he had been detained, she told CubaNet. The summons, delivered the previous afternoon at their home by two officers, did not state the reason for the appearance.
According to Rodríguez Au, the authorities justify the arrest with alleged disobedience linked to his social media posts: "They warned him twice in the first summonses that he should not post anything else on his networks, and he kept posting, that is the disobedience." She said she has not been told whether her husband is under investigation or formally charged: "They say I should look for a lawyer," she added.
The Penichet-Coronado pastoral family and chaplains denounced on Facebook that five people were being held at the Technical Investigations Department in Guanajay: Martínez Román, of the Assemblies of God church in San Antonio de los Baños; Alfredo Fominaya, a youth leader at a church of that denomination in Havana; pastor Rolando Pérez Lora, known as the Pregonero de Cristo; his wife, Melaine Hernández Ávila; and Eduardo Regalado Guerrero, from a Baptist church in Alamar. The last four had gone there to accompany Martínez.
CubaNet reported that everyone accompanying the activist was taken inside the facility and served with formal warning notices, and that several releases followed in the hours afterwards. Fuera de la Caja Cuba said Pérez Lora and Fominaya were still held at Villa Marista, and Diario de Cuba noted that it could not establish the individual situation of each detainee. Iván Daniel Calás Navarro said on Facebook, citing relatives, that Pérez Lora would be forcibly transferred from Havana to Las Tunas and had been threatened with prison if he continued his activism.
Martí Noticias reported on November 6 that Martínez had been summoned since Thursday to that Guanajay station, even though he lives in San Antonio de los Baños, and that Christian activists summoned that day were served with a formal warning for "disobedience" after being held incommunicado in police stations.
Rodríguez Au warned that her husband was on antibiotics every eight hours and an inhaler every six, and that both he and the couple's youngest daughter had symptoms of flu and bronchiolitis. By her account, a lieutenant assured her the detainee would receive medical care and that the station doctor would administer the medicines. She went to the Technical Investigations Department twice: the first time she brought the medicines and was able to see him briefly; the second time she handed over clothes, sheets and toiletries.
The arrest follows a sequence of summonses documented through 2026. In June he was summoned by State Security for a "conversation"; on September 24 he was questioned for more than an hour at the San Antonio de los Baños police station, where, according to the Cuban Observatory of Freedom of Expression of the Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and Press, officers tried to make him sign a document and he refused; on October 5 the interrogation in Guanajay lasted about two and a half hours and, according to his account gathered by that institute, he was threatened with prison if he continued his activism. That summons came four days after he led a public prayer outside the court that sentenced content creator Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente, known as Anna Bensi, and her mother, Caridad Silvente, to two years of limitation of liberty for circulating images of a police officer.
That same Friday, Diario de Cuba documented police encirclements in Havana: Marthadela Tamayo and Osvaldo Navarro said officers barred them from attending a cultural event at the United States Embassy, and Camila Acosta, Ángel Santiesteban and Yoani Sánchez, held for nine hours the previous day, also reported surveillance. The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights said that day that October closed with at least 387 repressive actions, including 30 arbitrary detentions and 145 acts of surveillance and police siege.
Sources: Cubanet · Diario de Cuba · Martí Noticias · Serie Yamacoa: Acciones represivas documentadas por mes (OCDH)
Data updated: 2026-11-07T16:15:00.000Z